Abkhazia: “yes” to UN, “no” to EU - for now

On January 17 Geneva will welcome the fourth round of negotiations on the Caucasus situation organized by the UN, OSCE and EU. The representatives of the organizations above arrived in Sukhum on February 4 to find out more about Abkhazia's position.

The meeting started with a warning expressed by the republic's Foreign Minister Sergey Shamba who was receiving the guests:

"If we are imposed a project contrary to our interests - he is quoted Rosbalt, - we will not accept it. Unfortunately recently we see that more attention is paid to a political not a pragmatic side of the problem".

This is how the Abkhazian Minister explicitly started with the problems that have lately appeared between the republic and these international organizations.

The thing is the UN mission mandate in the republic is out of date following Abkhazia's change of status into an independent state. The new document will be discussed in the UN HQ in New York on February 10.

While the presence of the EU monitors as Shamba further said was absolutely inadmissible to Abkhazia specifying that:

"The EU's absurd position that Abkhazia will never be recognized and that Russia must withdraw its recognition will not lead to any constructive results, or all the more to trust". Allegedly while the EU sticks to this position it makes no sense to talk about cooperation.

The ambassador of the Czech Republic (now chairing the EU) to Georgia has recently stated that the EU's main task is Georgia's territorial integrity restoration. What kind of dialogue between Europe and Abkhazia can there be after that?

Back to the UN mandate. Official Tbilisi can't wait till February 10. Right now it's demanding presentation of "security guarantees and exclusion of terrorist acts" that would be provided by "access of international monitors to Abkhazia and prompt deployment of peacekeeping missions".

That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Without any discussions? By an act of will of the world's most reputable organizations? Even if such a proposal is "a little too much" and in reality Tbilisi is "just" trying to accelerate the mandate discussion this is not the case when precipitance is justified.

The international organizations above have a good reputation first of all because they prefer not to go off the deep end. They act with consideration, deliberately and consistently, taking into account the opinions of all parties.

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